It's a Brill a Minute! Media Watchdog Steven on Daughter's Giddy Internet Adventure

How does Steven Brill—the entrepreneur and journalist whose many ventures include Court TV, American Lawyer magazine and the now defunct media-watchdog monthly Brill’s Content—feel about his daughter Emily Brill’s fledgling blog, Essentially Emily: Confessions of a 5th Avenue Misfit, whose topics include “elite private schools,” “Ritalin,” “fashion,” “exotic trips” and “nightlife”?

“It’s getting better every day,” Mr. Brill e-mailed from a vacation in Umbria. “It’s quite a distance from when she was writing a brilliant honors thesis in prep school about the electoral college, but it’s well-written and has a distinctive voice. It’s now clear that the more she does it, the better she is getting at it.” Does he mind being mentioned, as in an April 23rd post signed “Misfit”? (“Are we seeing eye to eye right now? Not exactly. He keeps telling me to ‘Get a J-O-B.’”) “I often wish she wouldn’t,” Mr. Brill wrote. “Then again, there are people I’ve written about who’ve had the same reaction, to put it mildly.”

Ms. Brill, 25, attributed her decision to blog with a long-standing interest in journalism, along with confidence gained after shedding 100 pounds last year. “I had a family newspaper in fourth grade with a subscription base of four people—my parents and two siblings—called The Brill Family Times that I would slide under their bedroom doors,” she told the Transom, adding that she rued posting a video of herself laughing over a private voice mail left by Men’s Vogue editor Hudson Morgan. “I learned a lot from that. I do have journalistic integrity, and I will have it from now on.”